Squad gets revenge for last season's NCAA loss to Bears

Eight months ago, Tad Boyle's team dedicated the Pac-12 Tournament championship to Alec Burks, Cory Higgins and the other members of the 2010-11 squad snubbed on "Selection Sunday."

Despite 21 wins, that group was not selected for the NCAA Tournament and settled for the NIT.

Colorado's 60-58 resume-building victory over No. 16 Baylor in the semifinals of the Charleston Classic on Friday at TD Arena was for last year's seniors.

Carlon Brown, Austin Dufault, Trey Eckloff and Nate Tomlinson were no doubt smiling somewhere as the young Buffs avenged the 80-63 loss to the Bears that kept CU from crashing the Sweet 16 party.

The Buffs (3-0) will face Murray State in the championship game on Sunday night (6:30 p.m., ESPN2).

"It's feels great. It was a good team victory," Andre Roberson said after scoring seven points and grabbing 12 rebounds. "A lot of guys coming into this game had last year's seniors on our shoulders, and we decided to do it for them. We came out with the win."

The program had not experienced a victory over a ranked non-conference opponent during the regular season since a 73-71 upset of Long Beach State on Dec. 5, 1973, in Boulder.

CU beat No. 23 UNLV 68-64 on March 15 at the Pit in Albuquerque, N.M., before the maddening loss to Baylor two nights later.

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"I think one thing that we keyed on was our pain that we felt last year," said Askia Booker, who scored a career-high 19 points on 8-for-18 shooting. "We didn't want to feel bad for ourselves and say there was (another) chance and we didn't take full advantage of it."

Brady Heslip -- who made nine 3-pointers in the Bears' win over CU at the NCAA Tournament -- hit a long 2-pointer to bring Baylor within 52-51.

Spencer Dinwiddie, who finished with 11 points, scored the next five points to give CU a six-point advantage at the final media timeout with 3:37 remaining.

The 6-6 sophomore point guard added a tough one-handed bank shot in traffic to make the score 59-54 with 93 seconds left.

"I thought Spencer Dinwiddie made some big-time shots at the end of the shot clock and driving in the lane to kind of keep our mojo going a little bit offensively," Boyle said. "Defensively is where we won that game. We made them work for everything."

CU held Jackson and Heslip to a combined 19 points on 6-for-20 shooting. Dinwiddie was the primary defender on Jackson with Chen chasing Heslip all over the court.

Austin had 10 rebounds but was 3-for-12 from the field with eight points.

"We knew we had to contain Pierre and Heslip off the three and also Isaiah Austin," Roberson said if the scouting report. "I thought we did a great job on all those guys and kind of shut them out."

CU led 35-30 at the intermission behind 16 points from Booker (7-for-11 shooting in the half).

Roberson was whistled for his second foul just 4:56 into the game, but the officials reviewed the call and tagged Scott with the foul instead.

After Baylor switched to a 2-3 zone defense out of a timeout, Roberson made a 3-pointer to start an 8-0 run by CU to end the first half.

Booker connected on a tough attempt from behind the arc at the end of the shot clock and added another basket with 52.3 seconds left to give the Buffs the five-point lead at the break.

The Bears (3-1) took a brief one-point lead (45-44) in the second half but were not able to overcome a driven CU team.

"They have talented players, just like we do. So it's going to come down to who wants it more," Booker said. "They're the No. 16 team in the nation and that's big for us. We're not going to be on our high horse, we're just going to stay humble because we know we can compete with any team, any night."

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